Am awaiting the delivery of my first Mac (Macbook Pro) and was wondering what way was best to transfer files (mostly photos) from Dell virus-ful laptop? I have a usb key, are they always compatable with Macs? Any other tips for first time user? Is there a book I should buy (dummy guide?!).

If you have a ton of photos you can connect your laptops together and pull photos across. If you have fewer than 10GB and you have a 4GB usb stick, you could just save them to that and bring them over.

Thanks for the replies, very helpful. I've been browsing through the site and all v hi-tech info (would you believe I've a degree in comp science) all this is way over my head! I assume all the basic questions e.g. what wire do i need to connect laptop to telly will be answered in literature I received with my MacBook so I won't need to annoy you lot with trivial queries?!

Trust me when I say the David Pogue book will make you into a near Mac veteran. It is a very easy read and take it form the Network engineer it is a very easy read and is even funny at points. It is well worth it's price and should be cheap since Snow Leopard (you should be eligible according to Apple's Up-To-Date if you got your Mac after June 8th) is coming in a matter of months.

Not always, but usually. Usually they come formatted as FAT32, which works on both Macs and PC's. If you purchase one specifically for the Mac, or one specifically for Windows, you may have to use Apple's Disk Utility (in your Mac's Utilities folder) to reformat it as FAT32.